


Waiting for Birdsong

by ayatsujik



Category: Stigma (Manga)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:38:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11809962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayatsujik/pseuds/ayatsujik
Summary: Tit and Stork 's journey to healing, with some help and revelations along the way.





	Waiting for Birdsong

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of an old work to AO3, lightly edited.

**傷跡**  
_scars_  
  
Time and money fix many things. After a few weeks the bandages on Tit's head come off, and upon removal the gauze on his cheek reveals just a pale, faintly uneven patch of skin that's only visible up close - say, the night Stork fell asleep watching his face in a stray ray of moonlight.   
  
Stork replaces the cracked lenses of his glasses with a new pair. They aren't tinted. Looking out at the streets and sky, grey under uniform grey, Stork thinks: there is no need to pretend things have colour, not anymore. Not when colour can live in his mind, given tint and hue by another vivid life beside him. Not when he needs to see things exactly as they are for this boy's sake.  
  
(He grips Tit's hand and says, when asked, it's nothing. Watches Tit smile in response to the smile in his voice.)  
  
It takes slightly over a month for the gunshot wound on Stork's back to heal. One cloudy morning he opens his eyes on the wall next to their current bed and finds himself facing away from Tit, whose fingers have slipped under his vest. They're caressing his back gingerly, fanning out in all the directions of a cross.   
  
It occurs to Stork that no woman he's slept with has ever touched him with such tender curiosity.   
  
Tit's fingers ascend until they encounter a ridged patch of skin just under his left shoulderblade. Pause. Small fingertips stroke the new scar on Stork's body, and Tit asks, in a voice foggy with sleep, does it still hurt?  
  
No, Stork says honestly, as he did the last time they had a similar conversation. Not anymore.  
  
Good, comes the mumbled reply.   
  
Stork listens to the warm breaths at his back, and realises Tit's fallen asleep again.  
  
\----  
  
**約束**  
_a promise_  
  
But time and money cannot uncloud the blankness of Tit's eyes. And Stork soon discovers that money runs out faster than time. The bag is getting dangerously light. Soon, he knows, they will have to stop somewhere, settle down for a while. Necessity takes on a hitherto-unpossessed gravity; Tit's presence makes Stork alert to any number of things he used to take for granted: water, food, shelter. So on another overcast morning he sits beside Tit on a bench at the lone bus stop in this town, and speaks.  
  
We have to stop longer in the next town, Stork begins.  
  
"Why?" Tit asks, absently swinging his legs. The soles of his sneakers just brush the ground. He's gotten taller, Stork realises, and wonders at the sudden, dull pressure somewhere in his chest.  
  
Because, he replies, the paper in the bag's going to be used up. And I need to work to get more of it.  
  
"Do we need it so much?" is Tit's next question.   
  
I need it to take care of you, Stork says, as gently as he knows how.   
  
Tit's sightless eyes look away and down. Stork furrows his brow slightly, gazing at the golden head beside him. There was no better answer he could have given. Nonetheless... Yet when Tit looks up again he's smiling, his mouth wide like a catapult band stretched to breaking point. It puts a slight frown on Stork's face, but Tit interrupts before he can say anything.  
  
"We'll be together, though," he says, his plaintive words not a question.   
  
Stork's eyes fall shut, and Tit seeks out his hand, curling his fingers around long, thin ones.  
  
Yes, he hears himself say, a single cracked syllable of sound. He swallows, to clear his throat. "I promise."  
  
\----  
  
**Nesting place**  
_棲みつく場所_  
  
In the first big town they reach, so far from their last stop that no resident calls Stork by a strange moniker, there is an old inn called the Robyn's Roost. It's large enough to hold four guest rooms and a simple bar. It's run by an equally old innkeeper who hires Stork as a bartender and Tit as amusement.  
  
Madame Finch wears dresses in a range of warm shades, brown and yellow and green. She does her grey hair up in a small hard bun, peering at Tit over the thin gold rims of her pince-nez. She tells them they can't expect more than a token sum when business is good, but they're welcome to lodge in one of her rooms as long as they do their jobs properly. They may call her Madame, and obviously you need help with that child - Tit, wasn't it - you're as skinny and scruffy as he is, Mr...Stork, did you say?   
  
They are lucky, Stork thinks. In the evenings he pours liquor and cleans glasses as middle-aged folk make idle talk at wooden tables; he lugs in fresh kegs of beer every weekend, and on chilly autumn afternoons he listens to Tit chatter to Madame Finch about any number of things: their travels, his family, the birds his grandfather used to study. Madame's old husband, they discover, was also a bird enthusiast. She discusses birds with Tit in her low, reedy voice - not merely pictures, but the actual creatures that she saw as a girl. When the sky was still blue. Stork watches Tit's eyes come the closest they'll ever get to being lit up as he hangs on to her every word, almost breathless in his anticipation.   
  
He is dismayed to find himself not entirely happy about seeing Tit so happy. Staring up at the ceiling one night, he realises it is because the source of Tit's current vivacity is another person. The almost laughable conclusion: cause, not just effect, is significant. People are different from objects.  
  
(Tit rolls over and snuggles his face into Stork's chest, and Stork decides not to dwell on it. If Tit is happy, so is he.)  
  
Again: they are lucky. In this small inn Tit's acclimatising to blindness with relative speed in relative safety. He doesn't take Stork's hand so often, now, relying on himself more and more to feel out doorways, furniture corners, walls. Stork often sees him with his eyes closed, concentrating on listening to sounds to locate the objects making them. Sound is a poor replacement for sight, but it must suffice. And so it is that, in due course, Tit no longer jumps at Madame Finch's purring cat winding itself around his ankles, or the crackle-snap of a log in the fireplace.  
  
I don't need to trouble you so much, now, he tells Stork cheerfully, and gets his hair ruffled in reply, Stork's gloved hand reaching out slowly, half-reluctantly.  
  
"...Stork?" Tit's saying. "Stork? Is something wrong?"  
  
No, Stork answers, and pushes at his voice till it softens. Nothing. Be careful if you go into the kitchen, Madame said she was boiling water.  
  
\----  
  
**行ってみよう**  
_let's go see_  
  
The tallest building in this town is made entirely of stone, slate-grey and forbiddingly unadorned. There's a triangular roof with a cross perched on it, and the whole structure is surrounded by large iron gates. (Tit wrapped his hands around the grilles once and quickly let go, saying Stork, they're so *cold*. Stork merely pulled his palms up to dust thin streaks of brownish rust off them.)  
  
It's called a church, Madame said when Stork and Tit first arrived. Madame puts on her best hat and visits it on the last day of every week. People go there to pray to God, she explains, because they want to hear what He has to say to them through His chosen minister.  
  
"Do you believe in God the Father?" Madame asks.   
  
Stork stares at her, and has no idea what to say. In the life he recalls there was no father, only one god. (The curve of his lips had been intensely, beautifully cruel; the black butterfly on his neck had moved whenever he swallowed.)   
  
"Would you like to come with me?" Madame offers. "All of us in this town do, but I wouldn't force you to."  
  
Stork looks at Tit, perched on the chair beside him. "Do you want to go?" he asks.  
  
Tit considers, and slowly shakes his head, his small mouth firming. Stork turns back to Madame and says quietly, "No."  
  
"I see," Madame says, and the ghost of a regret lingers on her half-opened mouth; she closes it again, reaching for her hat.  
  
"Madame," Tit ventures then, keeping his face in the direction of her voice. "Why do *you* go to church?"  
  
The old lady's in the middle of affixing a couple of hat-pins, but her hands are stilled by the disarming sincerity of Tit's question. For a while Stork looks at her look at Tit, golden head poised above the snowy tablecloth, and when she speaks her voice is a little lower than usual, threaded with wistfulness.   
  
"To pray we'll see birds in a blue sky again, someday," she says. "At least that's what I do."   
  
Tit lowers his eyes, and after a few moments he tugs at Stork's sleeve. He says, let's go, Stork, I want you to tell me what you see it's like there. (Stork looks up at Madame again, and this time she's smiling.)  
  
\----  
  
**言葉は言葉**  
_words are words_  
  
Inside the church are numerous rows of heavy wooden benches and a simple wooden altar draped with a gold and white cloth. Above the altar is a tall dome-shaped window with panes of numerous pieces of glass in various colours; the yellow ones in the centre form the shape of a cross. The sun's shining through it, bathing the altar in coloured light. Candles of various lengths, set in rough black holders, line the aisles at the two furthest ends of the room.   
  
Stork's eyes take in row after row of hats and neatly-combed heads: people have already filled most of the benches. Madame guides them to an empty one in front, and Stork settles Tit beside him, ignoring the curious stares and rustles aimed at their strange figures beside Madame. Yes, she's replying to the murmurs of another lady next to her, he's my current bartender. The boy? His child.   
  
(Tit's keeping still, but by now Stork's learnt to read all of his moods; the occasional swing of sneakered feet, the clenching and unclenching of small, strong fingers on the wooden edge of the bench are clues enough that Tit's impatient, waiting for what Madame called the church service to begin.)  
  
Madame's taken a small, thick black book out of her purse. It's open on her knee, revealing row after printed row of black letters on faded white paper. She says, on seeing Stork's curious face, it's a holy book that contains God's words. But her next lines are stilled by the arrival of a tall, stooped man dressed in a loose white gown over a black ankle-length coat. He stands behind the altar, and the rustles and whispers promptly vanish under the blanket of a hush. He clears his throat, the harsh sound echoing faintly in the high room, and begins to speak.  
  
(This is what Stork recalls hearing.)  
  
_O brethren_ , he says, his voice astonishingly deep and rich,  _O my brothers and sisters, man hath brought a time of darkness on this world. A time when a thousand things hath been lost. When the creatures of the Lord hath fled the soil sullied by men, and the skies are sullen with despair. Yet he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches._  
  
_And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood._  
  
_Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else, saith the Lord, I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent._  
  
_Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created._  
  
(it is an aural haze of words blurring into words, syllable over syllable of relentless rhythm -)  
  
_Amen._  
  
\----  
  
**Innocence**  
_穢れなき君へ_  
  
And before he knows it the service is finished. A plethora of loose sounds rustle into existence: people are standing up, moving out, talking. Stork blinks, and looks down; Tit's slipped a hand into his, and is squeezing so hard his fingertips are white.   
  
"He said," Tit says in a choked voice, "we were fallen. Doesn't that mean everyone did wrong things, Stork? That the sky stopped being blue because of us?  _Did God punish us by making the birds go away_? Stork...!"  
  
"Tit," Madame murmurs anxiously.   
  
There's a small cough, and the black-robed speaker is standing beside them. Almost everyone else has left the room. Tit looks up, and Stork eyes the man, faint wariness lurking in his eyes.  
  
"We are *all* sinners, little boy," the man says sonorously, "but fret not. Repent, ask the Lord's forgiveness, and you will be cleansed. Will you accept the Lord's grace?"  
  
Tit presses closer to Stork, trembling slightly. The man has his hands clasped together, eyes blankly sincere, and looking at him Stork suddenly discovers a wellspring of rage bubbling up within him (strange, he will later realise, I can't recall when I was last angered.)  
  
"This boy," Stork says, very slowly, "has never done anything wrong."  
  
The man looks at him coolly. "All of us, sir," he crisply replies, "are wrong. By our very existence here. We were cast out of Heaven by the sins of our first ancestors. We have lost so much, and still there are those amongst us who refuse to repent. It is no wonder our sky is grey. It is a perfect reflection of the state of man."  
  
And suddenly Stork's disengaged himself from Tit's clinging hand, has moved forward and grabbed the collar of the man in fingers of steel, lifting him an inch or two above the ground. His victim makes a strangled noise, fear contorting his face.  
  
"I said," he rasps, his voice weighed down by a deadly quiet. "That this boy needs no forgiveness. From any god."  
  
Without another word he abruptly releases his grip, and the man drops to the stone floor, trembling. Stork grabs Tit's hand and pulls him out of the church, not looking to see if Madame's following. Along the way back he finds himself talking, words spilling from his mouth. Images are burning in his mind's eye: Tit laughing, mouth wide and leaves tangled in his hair; Tit holding a dead bird in his hands and asking  _what does 'stuffed' mean_. Stork doesn't really hear what he's saying, so determined is he to convey the white-hot rebellion in his gut. You are not to blame, it wasn't God who made the sky grey and the birds leave, it was  _people_ , humans, and you had nothing to do with it, not you, nothing nothing nothing.   
  
Stork, Stork, Tit's crying out, digging his heels in. Stork, you're hurting me, let go. And when his mind clears Tit's buried his head in his chest, small strong hands clenching fistfuls of Stork's coat. Stork lifts his arms slowly and embraces Tit's shaking shoulders, and is utterly impervious to the strange glances they receive from passing townspeople.  
  
(Madame, curiously enough, remains unruffled when they return. She says, later, the minister doesn't always choose his words properly, and serves Tit an extra large helping of pudding.)  
  
\----  
  
**真っ白い季節**  
_season of pure white_  
  
It's close to a year since they left the town with the cross they built for Stork's black god, the rough wooden one with Tit's binoculars hung over it in benediction. Winter arrives in this place with fat white flakes drifting dizzily in bitter winds, taking Stork by surprise: he's never been this far east, and has no recollection of seeing snow before. Neither, it turns out, has Tit.   
  
And Madame Finch empties out a trunk of old winter clothes for them both: coats, mufflers, long thick trousers made of dark-coloured wool. My husband's dead, she says. So is my son. Robbed by gunmen when they were coming back from the next town, two decades ago. Take these and put them to good use.   
  
So Stork receives the folded garments, smelling faintly of must and the dry leaves of unfamiliar herbs, in his arms. It's been some time since he made contact with another's personal tragedy; the last memory he has is of a woman called Brandy, and her cold crumpled body in a gutter the morning after he left her bed. He shifts his grip on the winter clothes and thanks Madame awkwardly (Tit slips his hand into her wrinkled one, and is rewarded with another hair-ruffling.)  
  
Stork takes Tit out to run errands for Madame Finch, and tells him what the streets look like, buildings blanketed by new-fallen snow.   
  
"*All* white?" Tit asks in a hushed voice. "Really?"  
  
"Yes," Stork affirms, blowing greyish curls of smoke into the frosty air. The cigarette's balanced between two of his gloved fingers, its end glowing in the fading light. "All white. The snow's everywhere."  
  
"Clouds used to be white," Tit says, dreamily. "So the streets are like...as if they were all covered with sheets of cloud, aren't they?"  
  
He finds this happens fairly often. On telling Tit what he sees, Tit will remake the description, add a comparison like an ornament, an extra curve on a carving. Stork gazes out at the quiet white landscape, Tit's last question in his ears, and thinks: it is rather beautiful.  
  
"Never seen snow before?" Madame queries after dinner, a touch astonished. "Though you've been travelling for so long?"  
  
"No," Stork replies, cradling a mug of mulled wine in his hands. "Though I'd heard there was such a thing."  
  
Madame suddenly smiles, rather sadly. "Well, it's easier found than a blue sky. Or birds, for that matter."  
  
Beside Stork, Tit stirs, closing the inch of space between them on the couch. Stork shifts his eyes back to Madame's knowing face, and takes a sip of hot, spicy liquor.  
  
"Perhaps," is all he says, and Tit leans against him, the tension gradually leaving his body.  
  
\----  
  
**Fallen feathers**  
_舞い降りた羽_  
  
That night Tit shifts in the loose circle of Stork's arms, kicking his feet free from a fold of sheet, and says, wistfully, I wish I could see angels.  
  
Angels? Stork queries.   
  
Madame told me about a painting she saw when she was a girl. An angel with e _nor_ mous wings, all white feathers, flying. Like a bird and human mixed together. But she said they're even more pretty than birds are - here Tit broke off in the middle of a huge yawn - because they live right by God's side, they're the holiest of creatures. Only - (another yawn) - sometimes...they come down to earth to be with people...  
  
Stork tucks the blanket in around Tit's shoulders, and closes his own eyes.  
  
_He's lying on cold greyish concrete, his back aches, and he opens his eyes only when something soft brushes his cheek. He looks up and feathers are dancing down from the sky, tracing sinuous paths to earth. They're fat and white and fluffy, descending with slow relentlessness.  
  
He keeps his eyes open, and gradually a figure takes shapes amidst the falling feathers, drifting slowly towards him. Its flight is odd, somehow; awkward and slightly lopsided, as if it was hurt. The source of the feathers is revealed: the figure's beating large, curved wings behind its back, and as it approaches he squints, making out golden hair shining in the dim light. Suddenly he realises: there's blood on its left wing, horribly bright against the sheer whiteness of the feathers. Golden hair and crimson blood and purple eyes unbearably blank -  
  
A name forms on his lips, but his vocal chords are frozen with incredulity; the best he can do is to protest, deep in the back of his throat. When he raises his hands there are bloody feathers stuck to the skin on their backs._  
  
There's a weight pressing on his chest and stomach. Stork sucks in air with a gasp, and opens his eyes in real time to a familiar scenario: Tit leaning over him, perched on his legs and gazing at him with a worried face. The window behind Tit shows the sky's no lighter than a leaden grey. Snow is still falling, and Stork averts his eyes; the white flakes are grotesquely similar to feathers.  
  
It's a while before his breaths lose their harshness and his heartbeat fades from his ears. A familiar conversation follows - You were groaning. Ah. It was a nightmare? ...Probably.  
  
Tit clambers off him, returning to his side of the bed, and fists his hands into Stork's vest.   
  
"I know what your face looked like just now," he mumbles. "Even if I can't see...I don't need to see it, I know..."  
  
So we've always got to be together, Tit continues. Because I don't know anyone else's face like yours. He smiles as he says this: a smile like a catapult band about to break, beautiful and painful all at once.   
  
(Stork shuts his eyes as he buries his face in Tit's hair. He presses Tit's head into his chest, and soft gold strands caress the scars on the backs on his hands.)  
  
\----  
  
**コウのこだわり**  
_a stork's reservations_  
  
The cold snap eases in the next month. Snowfalls drift to an eventual halt; bitter winds cease haunting the streets. They no longer need to wear full-length coats when they go out.   
  
On a rainy spring afternoon Madame says, the two of you need haircuts, you're shaggy. She thrusts a hand mirror into Stork's face, and he has to admit that hair falling over his ears gives his head an uncanny resemblance to a mop. Tit, too, is in need of a trim; his hair's already grown past his collar and is sticking out in all places. Madame sits Stork down in a chair and throws a long sheet of cloth over his shoulders and body, proceeding to attack his hair with a slim, gleaming pair of silver scissors. Tit listens to their /snick-snick-snick/ with interest, his head cocked to one side.   
  
Madame only trims the unruly ends of Tit's hair and gathers it back for him with a band of black elastic. Stork looks at her in surprise, but she smiles placidly.  
  
Angels, Madame says like she's talking about grocery prices, have long hair. Or at least the ones I saw in that painting did.  
  
It occurred to Stork as he listened to scissors snipping off golden strands of hair: Tit really is growing. Taller, heavier, thinner. His face is already less round than Stork remembers, is starting to take on defined planes. But Tit is younger than he was when Stalk picked him up -  
  
(So ends the thought; there are no further comparisons he wants to make. In the end it comes down to this: Tit found him. Not the other way around.)  
  
To return to another conclusion, rephrased: perhaps time, more than money, fixes things.   
  
"Stork," Tit says to him one morning, very slowly and jerkily, "you're...wearing green. A shirt?"  
  
Madame sharply draws in a breath. Stork's coffee cup, half-full and still steaming, smacks into the tabletop with a /thunk/.   
  
Thick brown liquid bleeds into the whiteness of the cloth as Stork stares, pale-faced, at Tit, who's blinking curiously, holding up his hands to his eyes and gingerly wiggling his fingers. His hair's come loose, drifting light and golden around his cheeks.   
  
\----  
  
**青空を探しに (君とどこまでも)**  
_searching for a blue sky (together with you, no matter how far)_  
  
"His sight will fully return, eventually," Madame says some days later, folding up her newspaper with neat flicks of her small wrists. "Since he can see again, you should go if you want to. I refuse to hold you back from what you seek."  
  
Tit says he can make out outlines, blurred details of objects, colours. Stork's leaning against the windowsill, watching Tit take still tentative, half-incredulous steps in the herb garden outside. Looking around him in measured wonder; squinting at the plants or stooping to finger leaves.   
  
"Thank you," he says. "For everything."  
  
Madame makes a dismissive sound in her throat, and turns to the window too. But now Tit's running in, holding something: a stalk covered with small blue flowers. Look, it's so pretty, he says. There's a bunch of them growing underneath the bush.  
  
Madame takes his hand between both of hers. She says, her wrinkled fingers smoothing out the velvety petals of the blossoms, the sky you're looking for will be this colour, only deeper, far more beautiful.  
  
Stork, Stork, Tit says breathlessly. I think I heard a bird call. I looked up and there was *something* in the sky, not that I could see it clearly but, and it *called*. A low screeching kind of noise. It wasn't very loud because it was so high up, but I heard, I really did.  
  
It sounds like it was a migratory bird, Madame says, excitement bubbling up in her words. The kind my husband said moves to warm places during winter; they come back in the spring. Well. Maybe it was a sign to both of you.  
  
Stork understands the truth of Madame's words, with a conviction that eludes articulation. They are wanderers, Tit and him. They needed this temporary shelter, but now he can feel it: they need to start travelling again, side by side. Where, he isn't sure, and that isn't the matter.  
  
I want to see that bird again, Tit says wistfully.  
  
Then, Stork says, let's go find it.   
  
He watches light fill Tit's eyes, the smile arcing his mouth as he nods once, vigorously.

He thinks, it is the closest he will get to the sun.

(It is enough, it is all.)  
  


====  
  
_The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come..._    
\-- Song of Solomon, Canticles 2:12  
  
====


End file.
